DURHAM, N.C. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took aim on Monday at his rival Hillary Clinton’s argument that he is less electable than her given his recent series of troubles and because he has not been fully “vetted.”

Amid a flap over comments from his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other controversies, Obama has seen his poll numbers slide lately against both Clinton and the Republican candidate for November’s election, John McCain.

Obama publicly denounced Wright last week after the pastor moved back into the spotlight and repeated his inflammatory charges that the Sept. 11 attacks were in part retribution for U.S. policy and that the government spread AIDS to harm blacks.

Obama has also faced questions about his association with 1960s radical William Ayres and about why he doesn’t wear a U.S. flagpin.

The Illinois senator said those issues had hurt his campaign but did not “knock us off stride.” The fact that the impact from those problems was not greater was a sign that his candidacy was strong, he said.

“Despite all that, if you look at it, we’re still fundamentally tied with John McCain,” Obama said, responding to a question from an undecided voter who asked him about the electability question.

Clinton has pushed the argument that the party elders and officials known as the “superdelegates” should rally around her as the nominee because, as a former first lady, she has been “vetted” and is better able to fend off attacks from Republicans in a general election.

Obama’s counterargument is that the Wright controversy and other issues have that have come up amount to a “vetting” for him. He also challenged Clinton’s contention that Republicans would not try to dredge up old lines of attack against her.

“Sen. Clinton, despite what she says about being vetted, she hasn’t gone through what I’ve been going through over the last couple of months because she’s not the front-runner,” Obama said.

After Obama spoke, the McCain camp weighed in on the electability question, saying that Obama’s opposition to a summer gas tax holiday and his support for an increase in the capital gains tax would leave him vulnerable in the general election if he becomes the nominee.

“Those are Obama’s pledged positions, and they aren’t popular in North Carolina, Indiana or most anywhere else in America,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

-Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama orders food and coffee in Durham, North Carolina on May 5)
   

NEW ALBANY, Ind. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday brushed aside Hillary Clinton’s attempts to portray him as someone who lacked toughness and could not stand the heat of the media glare.

Clinton, who depicts herself as a fighter in her campaign speeches, has pounced on the Illinois senator’s critique of a television debate last week in which he was put on the defensive about issues such as whether he wears a flagpin and the fiery rhetoric of his pastor. She accused him of not being able to handle media scrutiny.

But Obama said it was the New York senator and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who have been thin-skinned about press questions.

“Nobody has complained more about the press about questions at debates, about being mistreated than Senator Clinton has or President Clinton. And so we have been pretty tame in terms of taking our shots and just rolling with them,” Obama told reporters while campaigning in Indiana, which holds its primary on May 6.

Clinton has tried to underline her message that she is the tougher candidate by running an ad featuring images of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The Republican National Committee has weighed in as well, suggesting Obama tries to dodge hard questions from the media.

“I know that people like to talk tough and use a lot of rhetoric about fighting and obliterating and all that stuff. You know that I have always believed that if you are tough, you don’t have to talk about it,” Obama said.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (U.S. Democratic candidate Barack Obama speaks at his Pennsylvania primary election night rally in Evansville.)

Bill Clinton is making news again.

Campaigning for his wife Hillary in Pennsylvania, the former president accused the Obama campaign of “playing the race card” and later lashed out at a reporter who asked him about his comments.

Could this hurt Hillary’s prospects in the must-win Keystone state, which holds its nominating contest today?

Bill Clinton was so popular among African Americans during his time in the White House that he was sometimes known as “the first black president,” but much of that goodwill evaporated after the racially charged South Carolina primary in January.

Many blacks were angered when he compared Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson, seeing it as an attempt to marginalize a black candidate who has drawn white support. Bill said he meant no offense, and later accused the Obama campaign of trying to take advantage of the remarks.

Bill took a lower-profile role in his wife’s campaign for several weeks after his run-ins with reporters who asked him about the remarks received prominent news coverage.

But evidently he still feels he was misrepresented.

When asked on Monday if he had been mistaken to compare Obama to Jackson, the civil rights leader and 1988 presidential candidate, Clinton told Philadelphia’s WHYY radio:

“No, and I think they played the race card on me. … I frankly thought the way the Obama campaign reacted was disrespectful to Jesse Jackson.”

On Tuesday, Obama seemed perplexed by Clinton’s remarks.

“Was there a plan to get him to say that my campaign was like Jesse Jackson’s? I don’t know what he was referring to, unfortunately,” Obama said at a diner in Pittsburgh.

Hillary did not seem so eager to revisit the subject.

“It’s old news. It’s been around for several months now,” she said in a television interview.

Clinton tried to distance himself from the remarks in a testy exchange at the Jewish Community Center in Pittsburgh. Here’s a full transcript, provided by the NBC reporter involved:

NBC reporter Mike Memoli: “Sir what did you mean yesterday when you said that the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?”

Clinton: “When did I say that, and to whom did I say that?”

Memoli: “On WHYY radio yesterday.”

Clinton: “No, no, no. That’s not what I said. You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today. This is a day about election day. Go back and see what the question was, and what my answer was. You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today. Have a nice day.”

Memoli: “Respectfully sir, though, you did say …”

Clinton: “Have a nice day.” [continues shaking hands with supporters]. “I said what I said, you can go and look at the interview. And if you’ll be real honest, you’ll also report what the question was and what the answer was.”

Memoli: “They asked you if you regretted your comparing Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama on the day after the South Carolina primary.”

Clinton: “And I pointed out that I did not do that, and that I complimented them both. And that Jesse Jackson took no offense. And I called him myself, I said: ‘Did you find that offensive?’ And he said no.”

photo credit: REUTERS/Bradley Bower (Clinton listens to Hillary Clinton address supporters at a Philadelphia rally on April 21)

SCRANTON, Pa. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama kicked off a day of campaigning in Pennsylvania by dropping by a Scranton diner for a breakfast of waffles, sausage and orange juice.
 
But the press corps went hungry — hungry for an answer that is.
 
The Illinois senator brushed aside a question from one reporter on his reaction to former President Jimmy Carter’s description of a positive meeting with leaders of the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas.
 
“Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” Obama replied.
    
Reporters traveling with the Illinois senator, fighting with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton over Pennsylvania ahead of its vote on Tuesday, are venting frustration over a lack of access to the candidate lately. Obama has not held a press availability in 10 days, though he has given dozens of interviews to local press in Pennyslvania.
    
Republicans have pounced on Obama’s “waffle” comment, suggesting he is evading tough questions.
    
“Today, Obama continued to dodge questions from the media, responding that he just wanted to eat his waffle,” the Republican National Committee said in an email sent to reporters that included press accounts of the waffle incident at the Glider diner.
    
Both Obama and Clinton are far less accessible to the media than presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, known for holding lengthy question-and-answer sessions with reporters on his Straight Talk Express bus.
    
The sessions last so long that some reporters say they run out of questions.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer (Obama greets Pennsylvania supporter)

WASHINGTON - White House hopeful Barack Obama often says his “funny name” is one of the things that makes his status as the Democratic frontrunner so unexpected.
    But at a luncheon with U.S. newspaper publishers and editors on Monday, a publisher made an embarrassing gaffe when asking the Illinois senator a question about the Taliban and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — but accidentally said “Obama” instead of “Osama.”
    “I think that was Osama bin Laden,” Obama corrected him.
    Realizing he had made an error, the publisher, Dean Singleton, chairman of the board of the Associated Press and founder of the NewsMedia Group newspaper company, apologized.
    “If I did that, I’m so sorry,” Singleton said.
    Obama made light of the mistake, drawing a mixture of laughter and some relief in the audience, which had been taken aback by the gaffe.
    “No, no, this is part of the exercise I’ve been going through for the last 15 months,” Obama said. “Which is why it’s pretty impressive that I’m still standing here.”

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Cohn (Obama addresses members of the Alliance for American Manufacturing)

ATLANTA - Commentator and activist Tavis Smiley has quit the syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show” after 12 years because of the “hate” he got from the show’s mainly black audience over his criticism of Sen. Barack Obama, Joyner said.

Joyner shocked listeners when he announced Smiley’s departure from the influential radio show on Friday and said he believed Smiley “can’t take the hate” he’d received from listeners who support the Democratic presidential candidate.

“We (the show and its listeners) are so emotional about this Barack Obama candidacy. If you don’t say anything for Barack Obama, you’re considered to be a hater.”

“He (Smiley) loves black America and black America has been very critical of him,” Joyner said on his show, which has millions of listeners. He said he wanted Smiley to reconsider his decision.

Smiley criticized Obama, who would be the first black president, for declining to attend his annual “State of the Black Union” conference in February, a conference attended by Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

Joyner’s comments raise an issue for blacks who have voted overwhelmingly for Obama in a string of primaries and caucuses: does support for Obama among them run so strong that those who express a different view get a hard time?

Commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson published an online column on Friday backing Smiley’s right to express a dissenting view on Obama and hitting back at his critics.
“Hang tough (Smiley) and don’t let the black Obama thought police run you out,” Hutchinson said in his weekly column.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/John Sommers II (Obama speaks at a campaign stop in Columbus, Indiana, on April 11, 2008) 

ALTOONA, Pa - Fans of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama might swoon at his speeches. They might stand in awe of his judgment and echo his call for change. But they probably are not impressed by his bowling skills.

The Illinois senator, who is on a six-day bus tour of Pennsylvania to “introduce himself” to the state’s voters, dropped in on a bowling alley in Altoona late on Saturday and, after chatting with some people, put on a pair of bowling shoes to try his hand in a competition with Sen. Robert Casey, who has recently endorsed him.

The candidate’s first attempt was a gutterball.

“I’ve got to get at least something,” he said as he turned around to face a growing crowd.

His next attempt, another gutterball, showed little improvement.

“No worries,” he said. “I’m not done.”

In his defense, Obama pointed out that he hadn’t bowled for 30 years.

Fellow bowlers — even Republicans — lined up for pictures and autographs, surprised that a presidential candidate was hanging out at their local alley. Obama probably is hoping that Pennsylvania voters are like the pins: once you get to know them, they fall more easily.

Obama eventually got a spare but it came after Casey had scored a strike and long after Roxanne Hart, a regular who joined the senators on the lane, had put them both to shame.

“I was terrible,” Obama said, smiling as he emerged from the Pleasant Valley Recreation Center bowling alley.

Hart put it a little more charitably: “He has a lot of potential.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

PITTSBURGH - Sen. Barack Obama held a campaign rally on Friday in the Soldiers and Sailors museum in Pittsburgh. No drama there? Well, the building was used to film a crucial sequence in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs.”
For anyone not familiar with the 1991 thriller, the scene occurs when serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, is locked in a large cage from which he toys with Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster .

It’s in this scene that she discloses to him her childhood memory of finding a slaughterhouse for lambs.

The cage is super secure but not secure enough to hold Lecter, who escapes by clubbing his guards to death, stringing one of them up from the walls and then ….

Actually, you should see the movie for yourself. It didn’t win five Oscars for nothing.

Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Casey held a news conference to explain his decision to endorse Obama in the very room where the cage was constructed, a spacious, opulent chamber with an ornate balcony.

Obama, who is running for the Democratic nomination, made no reference to the film in his speech in a hall downstairs.

But there was a distant echo of one of its most chilling lines. Lecter taunts Starling when she visits him in the cage with the words: “People will say we’re in love.”

During his speech, a supporter shouted to Obama: “I love you, Obama.” And he replied smoothly: “I love you back.”

Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Cohn. Obama (L) shakes hands with Senator Bob Casey at a campaign event at Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 28, 2008.